[✔️] February 11, 2023- Global Warming News Digest | Big money, Bird flu in humans, lightning strikes, petro-fascism,

[Richard Pauli]

/*February 11, 2023*/

/[  Stock holders have great power - (where is democracy?)  The Guardian ]
/***‘Monster profits’ for energy giants reveal a self-destructive fossil 
fuel resurgence*
Oliver Milman in New York
Last year’s combined $200bn profit for the ‘big five’ oil and gas 
companies brings little hope of driving down emissions

While 2022 inflicted hardship upon many people around the world due to 
soaring inflation, climate-driven disasters and war, the year was 
lucrative on an unprecedented scale for the fossil fuel industry, with 
the five largest western oil and gas companies alone making a combined 
$200bn in profits.

In a parade of annual results released over the past week the “big five” 
– Exxon, Chevron, Shell, BP and TotalEnergies – all revealed that last 
year was the most profitable in their respective histories, as the 
rising cost of oil and gas, driven in part by Russia’s invasion of 
Ukraine, helped turbocharge revenues...
- -
“If the bulk of your investments remain tied to fossil fuels, and you 
even plan to increase those investments, you cannot maintain to be 
Paris-aligned, because you will not achieve large-scale emissions 
reductions by 2030,” said Mark van Baal, founder of Follow This, an 
activist shareholder group.

“The picture is clear now, no oil major has plans to drive down 
emissions this decade. Now it’s up to the shareholders. Together with 
major investors, we continue to compel BP to put its full weight behind 
the energy transition.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/feb/09/profits-energy-fossil-fuel-resurgence-climate-crisis-shell-exxon-bp-chevron-totalenergies

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/[ Energy rate-payers fund PR disinformation through your utility bill  
- Dave Roberts podcast ]/
*Utilities are lobbying against the public interest. Here's how to stop it.*
A conversation with David Pomerantz of the Energy and Policy Institute.
FEB 10, 2023 - 67 min audio
There are many features of US public life that I believe, perhaps 
naively, would be the subject of a great deal more anger were they 
better understood. One of those is the role utilities play in climate 
policy.

A rapid transition to a low-carbon energy system is necessary to avoid 
the worst of climate change. Happily, that transition is going to be an 
enormous net benefit to US public health and the US economy. It's good 
for quality of life, economic growth, international competitiveness, 
national security, and the long-term inhabitability of the planet.

But it’s not necessarily good for the companies that actually sell 
energy to customers — power and gas utilities. In fact, utilities are 
using every tool at their disposal to slow the energy transition, from 
lobbying to PR campaigns to donations to, as the last few years have 
demonstrated, outright bribery.

And here's the even more galling bit: they are fighting against the 
clean-energy transition using your money. They use ratepayer money — 
from captive customers over whom they are granted a monopoly — to fund 
their lobbying. They have effectively conscripted their customers, who 
have no choice where to get their power and gas, into an involuntary 
small-donor army working against the public interest.

It’s outrageous. In a new report called “Getting Politics Out of Utility 
Bills,” the Energy and Policy Institute — one of the best utility 
watchdogs out there — details some of this utility corruption and offers 
recommendations for how to prevent it. These are not futile 
recommendations to Congress, but actions that fall within the current 
powers of state regulators and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

I have been ranting about utilities for years, and one of my most 
reliable sources on the subject has always been the report’s author, 
Energy and Policy Institute Executive Director David Pomerantz, so I was 
eager to talk to him to air some shared grievances, hear some enraging 
tales of utility shenanigans, and discuss what can be done to rein them 
in...
https://www.volts.wtf/p/utilities-are-lobbying-against-the?utm_source=podcast-email%2Csubstack&publication_id=193024&post_id=100390640&utm_medium=email#details



/[ transporting fossil fuel chemicals - text and audio ]/
*“There Will Be More Derailments”*
Feb 10, 2023
Julia Rock
&
Rebecca Burns
Pete Buttigieg’s Transportation Department has no plans to revive an 
Obama-era safety rule that could help prevent future train accidents...
- -
There is at least one brake safety proposal currently under 
consideration by federal rail regulators — an industry-backed rule 
relaxing brake testing requirements.

In 2021, in response to a petition from the Association of American 
Railroads, the FRA proposed amendments to existing safety standards that 
would reduce the frequency of brake testing on freight cars equipped 
with an electronic inspection-tracking system.

The changes under consideration are staunchly opposed by five major rail 
unions.

“Following through with a final rule would only deliver yet another 
financial windfall to rail carriers by eliminating inspections, testing 
and repairs, and deferring routine maintenance,” according to comments 
filed by the unions opposing the rule.

The FRA is continuing to review comments on the industry-backed brake 
testing rule, the agency confirmed.
https://www.levernews.com/there-will-be-more-derailments/



/[  pure distress from Grist -- keep the masks handy  "...the fuller 
catastrophe "]/
*As climate change disrupts ecosystems, a new outbreak of bird flu 
spreads to mammals*
“Am I concerned? Hell yes, I’m concerned.”
Zoya Teirstein - Staff Writer
Feb 10, 2023
Public health experts around the world are sounding the alarm as cases 
of a virulent strain of avian influenza called H5N1 rise in mammals. 
Bird flu has infected humans in the past, mostly people who work 
directly with diseased poultry, but there has never been widespread 
human-to-human transmission of the virus. If there were, it could be a 
catastrophe: The original H5N1 mutation had a 50 to 60 percent mortality 
rate in humans...
- -
That’s what appears to be happening now. Late last year, 50,000 mink on 
a mink farm in Spain were killed when lab tests showed the animals had 
contracted H5N1. A study published last month said that the virus had 
been spreading between the mammals, whose respiratory tracts have 
physiological similarities to humans’. It’s the first time such an 
outbreak has been documented.

“It’s something we’ve never seen,” Jean-Pierre Vaillancourt, a professor 
in the department of clinical sciences at the University of Montreal in 
Canada, said. “Am I concerned? Hell yes, I’m concerned.”

Recent isolated cases of H5N1 in various wild animal species are adding 
to experts’ unease. The virus has cropped up in seals, sea lions, 
dolphins, grizzly bears, foxes, and ferrets, many of which probably got 
the virus from eating infected birds. Globally, there have been six 
human H5N1 infections, including one death, in this surge of the virus, 
none of which was caused by one human giving it to another. But experts 
are keeping a close eye on H5N1 in case the virus continues to adapt to 
the point where it can easily infect humans and prompt person-to-person 
transmission.

“We don’t want an avian H5N1 being adapted to mammals,” Juergen A. 
Richt, director of the Center of Excellence for Emerging and Zoonotic 
Animal Diseases, told Grist. “Obviously, the next level would be humans.”

The past few years have seen an uptick in the size and pace of bird flu 
outbreaks. The virus has moved outside the bounds of its typical 
seasons, which coincide with birds’ spring and fall migrations. In the 
past year, H5N1 has been detected in the summer months in Italy, when 
high temperatures should have extinguished it, and in the depths of 
winter in Canada, when migrating birds are few and far between. The 
factors influencing these outbreaks are still largely unknown. The virus 
may be hanging out in the environment for longer or spreading with 
greater frequency and ease between birds.

Vaillancourt suspects one overarching explanation. “How come this virus 
is popping up in the middle of summer in the Mediterranean Sea or when 
it’s minus 20 or 30 in a commercial farm in Canada?” he asked. “There’s 
close to 80 countries in the world with this problem, we’ve never seen 
that before. That’s why we’re seriously looking at climate change.”

Studies have found that changing weather patterns fundamentally affect 
the way birds behave in ways that could influence the spread of bird 
flu. Rising temperatures and the seasonal changes they induce force 
birds to adjust their migratory patterns and converge in new 
combinations. Rising sea levels also affect where birds make their nests 
and lay their eggs, prompting species that don’t typically interact to 
make contact and share disease.

“In the last two to three years, we have seen a drastic change in the 
pattern of circulation of H5N1 virus in wild bird population, with 
massive outbreaks and a wider set of species involved,” Marius Gilbert, 
a spatial epidemiologist at the National Fund for Scientific Research in 
Brussels, told Grist via email. He said scientists have been able to 
make links between climate change and bird migration, but figuring out 
the ways in which climate change may be influencing the spread of avian 
flu is a far more complicated and difficult task.

Generally, research shows that climate change threatens to fundamentally 
restructure existing networks of animals, which creates conditions for 
diseases to find and infect new hosts, a process called “viral 
spillover.” More opportunities for disease sharing among a wide range of 
species, not just birds, may lead to more illnesses making the jump from 
animals into human beings, the way COVID did in 2019.

Implementing wildlife disease surveillance networks — systems local 
governments can use to find and identify rogue pathogens in the wild 
before they infect humans — can help keep these illnesses at bay. When 
an illness such as H5N1 is detected on a farm, nearby public health 
departments should be able to quickly distribute tests to farmworkers 
and anyone else who comes in contact with a sick animal, so that people 
with infections can isolate. Wealthy countries like the U.S. should also 
be investing heavily in an mRNA vaccine for influenza, which could be 
rapidly tweaked to match H5N1 if it started to spread among humans and 
shared with the rest of the globe. (The U.S. has a small stockpile of 
non-mRNA H5N1 vaccines, but ramping up production would take months.)

“We have many of the tools that are needed, including vaccines,” Zeynep 
Tufekci, a sociologist and an opinion writer for the New York Times, 
wrote in a recent column about H5N1. “What’s missing is a sense of 
urgency and immediate action.”
https://grist.org/health/as-climate-change-disrupts-ecosystems-a-new-outbreak-of-bird-flu-spreads-to-mammals/



/[  Yikes!  Counting more lightning strikes in our warming future - 
where LCC = Long Continuing Current - Pecos Hank says 30 pulses ]/
*Variation of lightning-ignited wildfire patterns under climate change*
Francisco J. Pérez-Invernón, Francisco J. Gordillo-Vázquez, Heidi 
Huntrieser & Patrick Jöckel
Nature Communications volume 14, Article number: 739 (2023) Cite this 
article
Published: 10 February 2023
Abstract

    Lightning is the main precursor of natural wildfires and
    Long-Continuing-Current (LCC) lightning flashes are proposed to be
    the main igniters of lightning-ignited wildfires (LIW). Previous
    studies predict a change of the global occurrence rate and spatial
    pattern of total lightning. Nevertheless, the sensitivity of
    lightning-ignited wildfire occurrence to climate change is
    uncertain. Here, we investigate space-based measurements of LCC
    lightning associated with lightning ignitions and present LCC
    lightning projections under the Representative Concentration Pathway
    RCP6.0 for the 2090s by applying a recent LCC lightning
    parameterization based on the updraft strength in thunderstorms. We
    find a 41% global increase of the LCC lightning flash rate.
    Increases are largest in South America, the western coast of North
    America, Central America, Australia, Southern and Eastern Asia, and
    Europe, while only regional variations are found in northern polar
    forests, where fire risk can affect permafrost soil carbon release.
    These results show that lightning schemes including LCC lightning
    are needed to project the occurrence of lightning-ignited wildfires
    under climate change.

Despite global differences in total lightning projections, all the 
parameterizations suggest a future increase in total lightning activity 
in Eastern Asia and northern boreal forests driven by warmer air and 
stronger convection. Investigating the role of climate change associated 
to the risk of lightning-ignited wildfires in northern boreal forests is 
essential, as wildfires in permafrost soils can contribute to a 
significant release of organic carbon to the atmosphere23.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-36500-5#code-availability

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/[ See the works of renowned storm chaser Pecos Hank - amazing YouTube 
videos ]/
*Welcome to the Pecos Hank Channel... Nature with a twist! *
Here you'll find the most beautiful collection of storm footage in 
existence. Tornadoes, lightning, supercells and all facets of severe 
thunderstorms are presented in cinematic and educational fashion.
For licensing contact hankschyma at gmail.com

Hank's footage airs worldwide and clients include BBC Earth, Nat Geo, 
Disney, TWC, CNN, Discovery and many more. Look for Hank's lightning in 
the major motion picture "The Last Witch Hunter" and Netflix original 
"TAU" as well as BBC's "Seven Worlds."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaPgSWdcYtY
https://www.youtube.com/@PecosHank/videos

https://www.youtube.com/@PecosHank/search?query=lightning%20strikes

*TOP 10 BEST LIGHTNING STRIKES *https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaPgSWdcYtY

*STRANGE LIGHTNING STRIKES - Caught on Camera and explained 
*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KO3H285CFRo



/[ up from, and out of desiccated soils  ]/
*Dirty truth: Study suggests new way climate change is fueling itself*
by Brooke Staggs
FEBRUARY 7, 2023
Healthy, undisturbed soil sinks carbon, storing what's generated when 
plants and other living things decompose so it doesn't get released as a 
planet-warming greenhouse gas.

But a new study out of UC Riverside suggests nitrogen pollution from 
cars and trucks and power plants might make soil release that carbon in 
Southern California and other similarly dry places—worsening, rather 
than helping to fight, climate change.

Dryland ecosystems like ours cover roughly 45% of land on Earth. They 
also store 33% of the carbon found in the top layer of soil worldwide. 
So if nitrogen pollution is making the carbon stored in these soils 
vulnerable, that definitely rings some alarm bells, said Peter Homyak, 
an environmental sciences professor at UC Riverside who co-authored the 
study.

The findings offer new motivation, then, to speed the transition away 
from fossil fuels and cut back on nitrogen-rich fertilizer if we want to 
slow global warming that's already creating climate refugees due to 
worsening heat waves, droughts, floods and wildfires.

"Our study highlights once again how nitrogen pollution can affect even 
the non-living environment around us, beyond the well-established 
detrimental effects of air pollution on us humans," said Johann Püspök 
of Austria, who started the study while he was Homyak's student at UC 
Riverside. "So, getting a grip on air pollution and fertilizer overuse 
is still an important task."

In places that get more regular rain and snow, other studies have shown 
that adding nitrogen to soil can increase carbon storage. Nitrogen fuels 
plant growth, which captures carbon and draws it down into the soil. It 
also helps slow decomposition of whatever is in the soil.

That's not what happened when Püspök's team analyzed nitrogen-enriched 
soil across Southern California, which has some of the worse nitrogen 
pollution levels in the world.

They took samples from areas at Irvine Ranch National Landmark in Orange 
County, Sky Oaks Field Station in San Diego County and Santa Margarita 
Ecological Reserve in Riverside County that have been fertilized with 
nitrogen in long-term experiments to study the effects of such pollution...

Püspök's team found that while adding nitrogen to soil in drylands did 
still increase plant growth and decrease decomposition, it did not 
increase the amount of carbon stored in the soils. Instead, they found 
extra nitrogen caused some dryland soil to acidify, then leach calcium 
as it tried to rebalance its pH levels. Since calcium binds to carbon, 
the two elements left the soil together, sending previously sequestered 
carbon into the atmosphere.

Carbon bound to calcium and other minerals in soils has previously been 
thought to be pretty stable, Homyak said. That's because the minerals 
seem to help hide carbon from microbes, which otherwise feed on decaying 
plant and animal matter and release that carbon in the process. Dryland 
soil also has been thought to be good at buffering itself from too much 
acidification. So Homyak said learning that nitrogen could upend both of 
those bits of accepted wisdom was concerning.

In the San Diego study area, the report published in the journal Global 
Change Biology says the team saw a 16% drop in once-stable carbon in the 
soil when it absorbed nitrogen.

"That means bare patches of soil with no plant cover and low microbial 
activity, which I always thought of as areas where not much is going on, 
appear to be affected by nitrogen pollution, too," Püspök said.

It's a tricky balance, Homyak acknowledged, since nitrogen fertilizers 
in agricultural sites do increase plant production. But use too much, 
and he said that nitrogen can end up all over the surrounding land, 
potentially triggering the acidification his team saw.

Even in places where fertilizer isn't being added to soil, nitrogen is 
increasingly present in the atmosphere. Thanks to modern industrial and 
agricultural practices and the advent of vehicles, the study states 
levels of nitrogen in Earth's atmosphere have tripled since 1850.

More research is needed to see if dryland soil emits carbon the same way 
when it gradually absorbs nitrogen in the atmosphere vs. when nitrogen 
is added to the soils all at once through fertilizer, as with samples 
the UC Riverside team tested. But Homyak said they expect the process to 
be pretty similar, since atmospheric nitrogen can build up, then get 
dumped in substantial amounts during the first big rain of the season.

There's no easy way to remediate soil that's acidified by nitrogen, 
Homyak said. You'd need to make the soil more alkaline. But short of 
having helicopters dump lime or some such substance on these lands, he 
said the only thing that will help is reducing emissions in the 
atmosphere and then giving the soil time to repair itself.

That's a very slow process. So Homyak said there's no time like the 
present to get started.
( more info ) https://phys.org/journals/global-change-biology/
https://phys.org/news/2023-02-dirty-truth-climate-fueling.html


/[ Thanks Harvard Gazette - ]/
*Exxon disputed climate findings for years. Its scientists knew better.*
Research shows that company modeled and predicted global warming with 
'shocking skill and accuracy' starting in the 1970s...
Alice McCarthy
Harvard Correspondent
January 12, 2023
Projections created internally by ExxonMobil starting in the late 1970s 
on the impact of fossil fuels on climate change were very accurate, even 
surpassing those of some academic and governmental scientists, according 
to an analysis published Thursday in Science by a team of Harvard-led 
researchers. Despite those forecasts, team leaders say, the 
multinational energy giant continued to sow doubt about the gathering 
crisis.

In “Assessing ExxonMobil’s Global Warming Projections,” researchers from 
Harvard and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research show for 
the first time the accuracy of previously unreported forecasts created 
by company scientists from 1977 through 2003. The Harvard team 
discovered that Exxon researchers created a series of remarkably 
reliable models and analyses projecting global warming from carbon 
dioxide emissions over the coming decades. Specifically, Exxon projected 
that fossil fuel emissions would lead to 0.20 degrees Celsius of global 
warming per decade, with a margin of error of 0.04 degrees — a trend 
that has been proven largely accurate...
- -
The current debate about when Exxon knew about the impact on climate 
change carbon emissions began in 2015 following news reports of internal 
company documents describing the multinational’s early knowledge of 
climate science.  Exxon disagreed with the reports, even providing a 
link to internal studies and memos from their own scientists and 
suggesting that interested parties should read them and make up their 
own minds.

“That’s exactly what we did,” said Supran, who is now at the University 
of Miami. Together, he and Oreskes spent a year researching those 
documents and in 2017 published a series of three papers analyzing 
Exxon’s 40-year history of climate communications. They were able to 
show there was a systematic discrepancy between what Exxon was saying 
internally and in academic circles versus what they were telling the 
public. “That led us to conclude that they had quantifiably misled the 
public, by essentially contributing quietly to climate science and yet 
loudly promoting doubt about that science,” said Supran.

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2023/01/harvard-led-analysis-finds-exxonmobil-internal-research-accurately-predicted-climate-change/


/[ Hubris-of-the-Month Club ]/
*Bill Gates says flying on a private jet doesn't make him "part of the 
problem" because he invests billions into fighting climate change*
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bill-gates-private-jet-doesnt-make-him-hypocrite-because-he-invests-billions-into-climate-change/


/[The news archive - looking back at when we were less stupid ]/
/*February 11, 2013*/
February 11, 2013: UPI reports on a Harvard University study that 
indicates "extreme weather and climate change present a potential threat 
to U.S. national security for which 'we are not prepared.'"

    CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Feb. 11 (UPI) -- Extreme weather and climate
    change present a potential threat to U.S. national security for
    which "we are not prepared," a study says.

    The study, prepared by Harvard University, was conducted to explore
    the forces driving extreme weather events, their impacts over the
    next decade and their implications for national security planning.

    Such events will affect water and food availability, energy
    decisions, the design of critical infrastructure and critical
    ecosystem resources, the report's authors said.

    "Lessons from the past are no longer of great value as a guide to
    the future," environment studies Professor Michael McElroy said.
    "Unexpected changes in regional weather are likely to define the new
    climate normal, and we are not prepared."

    That holds for both underdeveloped and industrialized countries with
    large costs in terms of economic and human security, the study
    found, and specific regional climate impacts -- droughts and
    desertification in Mexico, Southwest Asia, and the Eastern
    Mediterranean, and increased flooding in South Asia -- were singled
    out as being of particular strategic importance to the United States.

    Extreme weather require the U.S. to improve its scientific and
    technical capacity to observe key indicators, monitor unfolding
    events, and forewarn of impending security threats as nations around
    the world adapt to a changing climate, the report authors said.

http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2013/02/11/Climate-change-risks-to-US-security-seen/UPI-54781360632325/#ixzz2m3sx4HrC 




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